Skip to main content
Main

Cabbage Boiled and Stewed

A stew of boiled cabbage, bacon, and meat seasoned with salt, pepper, parsley, green onions, cloves, and nutmeg.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 11 ingredients
Jump to recipe ↓

Why it works: Clove and nutmeg match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 8,686 recipes. Both carry estragole, which smells anise, licorice. The science ↓

Cabbage Boiled and Stewed

Ingredients

Directions

Prepare the cabbage

  1. Boil the cabbage quarters with the bacon for 15 minutes.

  2. Transfer the cabbage to cold water and squeeze it well.

  3. Tie each quarter to preserve its shape.

Stew and serve

  1. Stew the cabbage with stock, salt, pepper, parsley, green onions, cloves, nutmeg, and your chosen meat.

  2. When the meat and cabbage are done, wipe off excess grease from the cabbage.

  3. Serve the cabbage with the bacon on top and a sauce of good cullis, seasoned to taste.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Clove + nutmegtop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together8,686 recipes

    Shared aroma: estragole (anise, licorice).

  2. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  3. Parsley + nutmegtop 3% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together5,062 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  4. Pepper + clovetop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together17,451 recipes

    Shared aroma: ethyl octanoate (fruity, wine).

  5. Cabbage + peppertop 5% of all pairs
    Smell alikemoderate
    Cooked together4,081 recipes

    Shared aroma: 2-isopropyl-3-methoxypyrazine (earthy, pea).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Cabbage
Forms the main body of the stew and becomes tender and sweet as it cooks.
Bacon
Adds fat and smoky flavour that seasons the cabbage and stock as it renders.
Stock
Provides the liquid that gently cooks the cabbage and carries the seasonings through the dish.
Cloves
Adds warm, aromatic spice flavour to the stewing liquid.

The step that matters

Squeezing the cabbage after boiling. Cabbage holds a lot of water and bitter compounds from its first boil. Squeezing it well removes excess liquid so the stew does not become watery and the flavour stays concentrated.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (cabbage, pepper, parsley, clove, nutmeg, meat):

  1. Carrotfits better
  2. Shallotfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against cabbage, pepper, parsley, clove, nutmeg, meat. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

You might also like

Red CabbageRed Cabbage65 recipesStewed CabbageStewed Cabbage58 recipesMeat CroquettesMeat Croquettes52 recipesBaked CabbageBaked Cabbage51 recipes